Peyton Jones
Peyton Jones (1840-1906)
1906 Obituary [1]
PEYTON JONES, eldest son of the late Captain John Peyton Jones, of Westbury, Tasmania, was born at Ivanhoe in that colony on the 14th February, 1840, and received his education at Hutcheson School, Hobart.
A career in the army being abandoned in favour of the engineering profession, he entered the Victorian Railway Department in 1857, and served under the Chief Engineer until 1860.
In 1863 he obtained a certificate as Licensed Contract Surveyor, and practised as such for several years, after which he joined the South Australian Rai1ways as an assistant engineer, being responsible for several permanent surveys.
In 1869 he rejoined the Victorian Railway Department, and after assisting the District Engineer on the construction of the first section of the North Eastern line, he was given responsible charge under the Engineer-in chief of a number of lines in Victoria, ranking as District Engineer.
From his early connection with the service, Mr. Jones was entitled to be considered a pioneer of railway construction in Victoria, the lines carried out under his supervision aggregating 400 miles in length and including sections of the Melbourne and Adelaide trunk line, the South Gippsland railway, and numerous suburban and other lines.
An attack of ptrdysis, from which he never fully recovered, was the immediate cause of his resignation in 1893 from the service in which his ability and kindly disposition had made him deservedly popular and widely esteemed, and after living in retirement for some years at his home in South Yarra, he died on the 9th October, 1904, in his sixty-fifth year.
Mr. Jones was elected a Member of this Institution on the 7th December, 1886.